Public Internet WiFi or Hotspot is a very common sight that we can usually find in many public areas or places that require customers to use the Internet. More and more people and places around the world have access to the Internet. It is clear that the Internet and access to the internet will continue to grow and will continue to be an important part of our daily lives.

Steps for Setting Up a Hotspot

There are several steps that need to be considered when creating Internet WiFi or Hotspots. I will explain the simple steps for creating a public hotspot. First and foremost is determining your location. If you intend to create a public hotspot, you may already have a place in mind. Your chosen place may be hotels, cafes, or other important public places where people need internet acces.

The second is the internet connection itself. You must have an Internet connection to share or sell it to your customers. Find local ISPs for offers and coverage of Internet connections. The third is hardware for sharing the Internet, usually you need a modem (from your ISP or yours) for an Internet connection. You will also need a wireless router to share your Internet connection, there are many types of hardware with different capabilities to consider when choosing a router. Find the one that best suits your needs.

Types of Hotspots

After you have all the physical requirements to make public WiFi Internet, the next step is you need to decide whether you want to charge for your hotspot or make it free. Usually places that will charge for the use of WiFi Internet are hotels, campsites, ports and business conferences. Places that often offer free WiFi Internet are cafes, restaurants, waiting rooms, and other public areas. There are also two types of hotspots that you can make. The first is a non-managed Hotspot system that you can create directly using your wireless router. The second is a managed hotspot system, with this system you have to connect your wireless router to a hotspot service that allows you to manage your hotspot.

Unmanaged hotspots

If you are going to create a managed system-free Hotspot you can set up your wireless router with a WPA2 security password for customers to join your WiFi network to access the Internet. There are advantages and disadvantages of unmanaged Hotspots. The advantages of an unmanaged WiFi system are: Quick and Easy Access and minimal maintenance and configuration. Losses from unmanaged Hotspot systems are: less secure, simultaneous use (with one password many people can access hotspots), vulnerable to bandwidth abusers.

Managed Hotspot

Another option is to have a managed Hotspot System. The requirements are the same as before but by using a managed system you have to take a few more steps to modify your wireless router to configure the connection to the managed hotspot service. There are many billing system providers that are managed out there, choose the one that suits your needs. The benefit of having a managed WiFi Internet system is that you can manage individual users, you can control how much time or bandwidth you can use by individual users. You can also have your own splash page before users connect to promote your Hotspot, users can even pay using a credit card to access Hotspots.

Those are a few steps and a simple example of what you need to do to create an WiFi Internet system. Remember when making your own public Internet access to consider your needs and requirements that are right for your business. Pandu Hartanto is a computer science graduate from Indonesia, he is a partner in Inovasia Kreatif. EasyHotspot nano is a cloud-based service for Hotspot Management systems that summarizes all the complexities behind hotspot billing technology into an easy-to-use "dead simple" hotspot system for Hotels, Cafes, Schools and wherever you want to share an internet connection.